If I Never Knew You
by Ashleigh Errow
Summary: If i never knew you Songfic from Pocahontas Alternate Timeline drabble-ish  What if the Straw Hats never met?
1. Luffy

_**A/N: ok so I had this idea the other day and I was thinking what it would be like if the Straw Hats had never met, if Luffy never came along. It's pretty crappy and sad cuz he saved all of them and gave them a family so this is how I imagine things would be. First off is Luffy. The only way I can think of him not wanting to be a pirate is if he never met Shanks so here it goes. **_

_**Differences: **_

_**No Shanks, No Straw Hat, No gomu gomu no mi, and No aspiration to be a pirate.**_

**IF I NEVER KNEW YOU**

**By: Ashleigh Errow **

**CHAPTER 1**

**Luffy**

I thought our love would be so beautiful  
Somehow we'd make the whole world bright  
I thought our love would be so beautiful  
We'd turn the darkness into light  
And still my heart is saying we were right  
we were right

The skinny seventeen-year-old boy walked down the narrow forest path. The afternoon sun barely shone through the dense cover of trees but the few rays peeking through forced the boy to shield his eyes from the brightness. He absentmindedly scratched at the irritating bandages covering his latest injury; he had fallen off a cliff, again. As usual, the boy had been too busy thinking that he hadn't notice the sudden drop off ahead of him until he was tumbling down it. He had amazing luck though and had walked away from the fall with only a broken arm. For someone as young as he was he had a surprising amount of scars and bruises.

He didn't own an article of clothing that wasn't ripped nor did he have a bone in his body that he hadn't broken. Throughout the years the boy's various adventures had taken a toll on the poor kid, but he never stopped searching for something to fill the odd emptiness he felt. Nothing, not the familiar rush of adrenaline as he risked life and limb in crazy stunts or the time spent with Makino and Ace, could fill the odd depression he had been feeling since he was ten. He remembered one day, he just felt wrong.

All day he had a feeling something special was supposed to happen and when it didn't he had felt… wrong. It was wrong and he hadn't felt right since then. Soon after that fateful day, Luffy was sent to live with Dadan and that's when he found a temporary solution. With Ace to lead him to adventure he had many exciting times and would come out of each endeavor stronger than before. The best part was, when he was running for his life, or fighting and beating a strong opponent, the emptiness seemed to lessen somewhat and he felt like he was doing something he was supposed to, something he was meant to do. The years went by, and with each year his stunts became more dangerous, that added to the fact that he had always had a problem with balance and an extremely short attention span meant injury was an inevitable and often occurrence. The townspeople often told him that it was a miracle he hadn't died years ago.

The boy was soon to be sent off to join the Marines, his grandfather had been livid when Ace had left three years ago and refused to let the younger boy go down the same path, but once again like all those years ago the boy felt the odd expectancy. Something important should be happening today, but it wasn't. Here he was in the forest, with that odd feeling of emptiness and a peculiar sensation on his head like the ghost of something missing.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Everything about him and his life felt like it should be different. He fell to his knees, the twinge of pain from the scab-covered joints didn't even come close to the pain of the loneliness he felt.

Lonely. Empty. Lost. Wrong.

"What?" he cried out, choking on the sob that accompanied the sudden fall of tears. He coughed and sobbed begging the words, no, the names that were just beyond his reach, to come to his mind. They meant something to him; those names he couldn't think of were everything.

He cried. For hours he cried for the thing, the life and the people that were just out of his reach. The names he would never hear, the family he would never know that had haunted him and it seemed they always would. He stood once the last tear that had been shed was just a dry trail of salt mingling with the thousands of other tears that had fallen from the dark eyes over the years.

He put a hand up to his left eye. It was another phantom injury, a pain just under his left eye that he felt on occasion from an injury he never had, just like the feeling on his head that was almost like a hat, and the emptiness in his heart. He knew something was wrong. There was something out there that was supposed to make him happy, make the emptiness disappear and his dreams come true. He knew, deep down, that he would never find it; it was too late to even try. But the boy still wished and would never stop wishing that at least some semblance of an answer would come to him, because he needed the names like he needed air, he needed that wrongness to be erased. He knew it never would.

_**Review Please. This is Un-betaed and i would appreciate critiques : ) **_


	2. Zoro

_**A/N: ok so here's chapter 2 Zoro I'm sure you can figure out the order of the chapters. If you want me to add any other non-Straw-Hat characters that would be affected by the crew never coming together (Coby, Vivi, etc.) then please review and I'll write it once I'm finished with the crew. Also I'm really sorry for my slow updates I don't have a lot of will power and it's hard for me to overcome my laziness and writers block. Reviews and adds help remind me that people eagerly rely on my updates though so just letting' ya'll know. Also Nanowrimo's coming up and that's just another excuse to not work on my fanfiction but anyway i'm hoping it'll inspire me to write more in the future. On with the chapter.  
**_

**IF I NEVER KNEW YOU**

**By: Ashleigh Errow**

**CHAPTER 2**

**Zoro**  
If I never knew you  
If I never felt this love  
I would have no inkling of  
How precious life can be

The green haired bounty hunter looked down at the smashed onigiri. It had been hours since the little girl had visited him and he hoped she hadn't been injured when the marines threw her over the wall. She was a sweet kid and he didn't want anything to happen to her because of him. He shivered in the cold air of the night and tried to shake off the weird feeling that had come over him that afternoon. It was strange and hard to place but it felt distinctly wrong, like he had missed something important. It was odd and uncomfortable. He didn't understand it in the slightest. The feeling pestered him deep into the night but he eventually fell into an uneasy sleep.

He woke up late into the next morning and sighed at the prospect of another day filled with boredom and the strange feeling he had been plagued with the previous night. The day progressed slowly and uneventfully until it reached the afternoon. The obnoxious kid with the weirdly shaped hair came to bother him again, flanked, as usual, by a few wobbly-kneed marines. There were three or four more marines with the blonde than on the kid's other visits but he didn't think about it too much until the words coming from the purple suited jerk's mouth reached the swordsman's ears.

The words were almost impossible to comprehend. For such an unbelievable person to say such an important thing was impossible. He couldn't believe it. There was no way such a bothersome and self-important little shit could end his dream, Kuina's dream. He couldn't believe it, he wouldn't… and yet the marines raised their guns anyway. The butt-chinned brat smirked and the swordsman glared. This wasn't happening, there was no way it could be it _shouldn't _be happening. He should be free now fighting for… for what? or more... _who?_ he didn't know but he should _NOT _be facing the barrel of a gun with no chance at freedom.

It felt... wrong.

The feeling was overwhelming. Even worse than the realization that his promise to Kuina would never be fulfilled, that his own dream would never be reached, that he would die tied to a couple of insignificant wooden poles by some spare rope the marines found lying around that wouldn't have been even remotely close to a problem had his swords been in his possession, none of it compared to the horrendous feeling of loss he felt.

He didn't know quite know what it was he had lost but he knew it was big. It was important and life changing and gone above all things. He glared at the bastard who smiled back sadistically while signaling for the marines to pull the triggers. A series of loud bangs exploded around the swordsman followed immediately by the scorching pain of the bullets embedding themselves into his skin, ripping through muscle and arteries and organs leaving pain and destruction in their wake.

In that instant the swordsman was hit with innumerable emotions and senses. Previously unattainable unbeatable happiness, uncontrollable sadness, unending but not unwanted annoyance, easy and pleasurable contentment, unstoppable fury, and many other extremely powerful emotions swept through him. He smelled the sea, sweat, iron, wood, blood, fire, many things he had smelled before but now in one instant had more meaning and importance than they had had before and with those familiar and even slightly understandable came the unexplained smell of... oranges, delicious seafood, professionally cooked meat, deserts, jungles, frozen kingdoms, clouds, an unidentified fur, cola, cigarette smoke, Tabasco, bones, so many things he had never found important or never actually had the pleasure of smelling. He heard laughter, and screams, and crying that tore at his heart, music, and explosions, and so much more. He felt himself being hugged, and punched in the head, he felt his swords block a surprisingly powerful kick, he could feel himself move in countless hours of training and then pain, one so completely unbearable and much worse than that of the bullets currently tearing through his skin but certainly much more worth bearing. So much passed through him all from a time that he had lost that had simply passed him by.

The weight of it all would have brought tears to his eyes, and sobs to his chest had one of the bullets been a centimeter to the right. The bullet stayed true though, and sped right into the most important muscle, that was simultaneously filled to the brim and devastatingly empty at the same time.

The bullet made its rushed path through the green-haired man's heart ceasing the pained and disappointed beating and Roronoa Zoro knew no more.

On another island in East Blue a bandaged and heartbroken boy made his way up the dirt road to meet his grandfather. The boy was to be taken to the marine base on the other side of the island in a few days and his whole being screamed at the wrongness of that. With every sluggish step he took up the path he felt the wrongness but of course didn't have the slightest inkling of how to stop it. The boy had spent another day feeling the need to be somewhere else instead of the small island. The boy stopped walking. His face paled at a sudden, breathtaking, paralyzing loss. He collapsed and choked as his own heart felt the heat and pain of a bullet passing into his own chest. He saw a flash of green and silver, heard the whish of metal slicing through the air and then he blacked out.


End file.
